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	Priest's Decision to Shorten Mass Upset Slain Nun, Woman Testifies By David Yonke Toledo Blade April 29, 2006 http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20060429/NEWS02/604290371 While prosecutors in the Rev. Gerald Robinson's murder trial have said they will not seek to prove a motive, they called a witness yesterday who testified that Sister Margaret Ann Pahl was noticeably upset with how the priest cut Mass short on Good Friday - the day before she was killed. Shirley Ann Lucas, who cleaned the Sisters of Mercy convent at Mercy Hospital every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, said that after cleaning the nuns' rooms on April 4, 1980, she met Sister Margaret Ann outside the first-floor chapel. "She came out and took my hand and wished myself and my two daughters an Easter blessing and peace," Ms. Lucas said, fraught with emotion. The 71-year-old nun then squeezed the housekeeper's hand and said, "Why do they cheat God from what belongs to Him?" Ms. Lucas testified. Sister Margaret Ann was brutally slain the next morning. She was choked nearly to death, laid on the sacristy floor, stabbed 31 times, and left partially stripped. Father Robinson, 68, was arrested by Lucas County cold-case investigators on April 23, 2004, and charged with murder. Ms. Lucas was one of five workers at the former hospital, now a college, who testified yesterday in Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Thomas Osowik's courtroom about their recollections of events and hospital policies surrounding the 26-year-old murder. Robert Wodarski, a night shift security guard, said he walked past the chapel between 6:50 and 6:55 a.m. that Holy Saturday and saw that its doors were open and the lights were on. Another hospital worker testified on Thursday that those doors were locked when she tried to enter the chapel to pray that day at 7 a.m. - the only time she was ever locked out of her daily 7 a.m. visit. Mr. Wodarski said the first time he ever met Father Robinson, "I think we scared each other." The priest was on the top floor of the parking garage sometime after midnight. "I asked him what he was doing up there, and he said he was meditating," Mr. Wodarski said. Wardell Langston II, a former janitorial worker, testified that he heard frantic footsteps about 7:30 a.m., shortly after the nun's death. He said he heard the footsteps running down one hallway that leads from the chapel, across a balcony above the lobby, and into another hallway where Father Robinson lived. Pointing to a floor plan of the building, Mr. Langston told jurors that he backed up to get a look upstairs and didn't see anyone, but he felt like "something must be wrong … somebody was trying to get away." Asked by Dean Mandros, a Lucas County assistant prosecutor, if he went upstairs to investigate, Mr. Langston replied: "To be honest with you, I'm not a hero. I didn't want to go up there." Defense attorney Alan Konop asked Mr. Langston where he was standing when he heard the footsteps, and Mr. Langston said he was about four or five feet from a co-worker who was operating "an old, loud" floor-polishing machine. Mr. Langston, again pointing to a floor plan of the area, showed that the footsteps stopped near the beginning of a hallway. Father Robinson, Mercy's chaplain at the time, lived in an apartment at the far end of the hall. Earlier, in an emotional moment, former housekeeper Valerie Berning broke down when a prosecutor showed her the priest's sword-shaped letter opener allegedly used to stab Sister Margaret Ann. Ms. Berning said she cleaned Father Robinson's apartment two or three times during her nine years at Mercy. One day, after the murder, she entered the apartment to clean it and had a strange sensation when she spotted the 9-inch letter opener atop the priest's desk. "When I seen that letter opener, I just had bad feelings and I walked out of the room," Ms. Berning said in a shaky voice. When Larry Kiroff, a Lucas County assistant prosecutor, showed her the letter opener, Ms. Berning began to cry softly. Ms. Lucas described Sister Margaret Ann as "very, very strict; very firm. Things had to be done a certain way." For example, she said, when she first started cleaning the convent, Sister Margaret Ann chewed her out for throwing things away too soon. "When I went up there the next time, Sister was waiting for me. She took me into the bathroom and showed me how to take those old soaps and press them together. And not to empty the [toilet paper] rolls when there was one sheet on it." Ms. Lucas brought laughter to the courtroom recalling a day when Sister Margaret Ann was playing opera music in the convent. "She asked if I liked it. I said, 'Yes, I like some opera music, not all of it.' And she asked me who my favorite was, and I made a big mistake and said Elvis Presley's 'How Great Thou Art.' "The sister was a little upset because she felt he was a little too wiggly and that Catholics shouldn't feel the way they do about him," Ms. Lucas said to a burst of laughter. A sixth witness who testified yesterday, Elizabeth Benzinger of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, reviewed how DNA evidence in the case had degraded over the years and was in such small amounts that she could not use it to create scientifically reliable profiles. If convicted, Father Robinson faces a possible sentence of life in prison. Contact David Yonke at: dyonke@theblade.com or 419-724-6154.
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